New Features For 06/09/2002

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Originally posted here by GreekGoddess
I'd rather my greenies mean less than giving out reds to make up for any balance....I don't like to flame, I don't see the point. It doesn't accomplish anything. I'm just here to learn, if I find a good post, it's going to get my greens, if I find a post that wasn't something to brag about, I'm going to keep on going. There's NO need to be cruel.

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I agree with GreekGoddess and many other who have made their voice heard in this thread.

IMHO many of the senior's AP's are worth to much and this can mean that some users will get unfair neg's since it's aint that many post's worthy a neg. assignment and the few threads who deserves neg. AP's will probably be "overloaded" :(.

I realize that my antipoints are low enogh as it is and this will probobly get me kicked off but this is an online community so i'm going to speak my mind anyways. I dont really agree with The new system because you are getting reduced in the way you can make your opinions about things. in my Opinion it is almost a form of censor ship.

I think we'll see what happens as it happens, but I would just like to play devil's advocate and suggest that it might be bad if it causes people to give out needless positive or negative points (which they might not give otherwise) in order to keep giving what they DO want to give.

I really don't see a problem. Not with the system itself. Sure, the balancing act will suck right now, seeing as how, many people give out only postive anti-points, including myself.

And no one is saying that you can't give anyone antipoints. :) Don't give people antipoints (either one), just for the hell of it, or because they say they are "turning themselves into a new person", etc. As JP stated earlier in this thread.

Personally, I will now, only give the posts, that I think really deserve them, positives. Same goes with negative.

Sadly, that type of thing, isn't so common among the masses. And they tend, to think "OMG, I'm way off scale, i better assign a lot more posts some negative anti-points", regardless of the quality of the other person's post. Instead they could have just skipped giving out ANY points and going on to the next post. :)

This will definently help show who is the most knowledgable, if not abused. Which can happen quite easily. It could very well turn into another Popularity Contest.

Hmm...

I can appreciate the logic of what JP is trying to do here. I even seem to remember a thread where the suggestion was made to have a thread point aggregate be listed alongside the thread link, so that we could see if the thread was about to waste out time and bandwidth before we clicked on it.

If you continue thinking along these lines then an auto thread close feature is the next logical development. In the case of some recent threads, such as those by a certain Dark[Zeus], that got flamed to bits, this would enable the system to automatically close the offending thread.

I can also appreciate why such a development would require additional fine tuning of the antipoint system to avoid the accidental discontinuation of threads. I can further appreciate why this system has to be a black box, or 'magic' if you prefer, to avoid misuse of the Anti Points system.

Lastly, I appreciate, as a developer myself, how annoying it can be to have someone, especially someone who doesn't understand how the underlying decision model works, second guess what you're doing. So let me be clear that I'm _not_ second guessing here, but I do have some observations.

I'm fairly careful about giving out anti-points. I only assign them under two conditions. The first condition is that I finish reading the post and think 'Wow - that was a really good/useful/worthwhile post. You desvere some greens'. The second condition is when I finish reading a post and think 'hanging is too good for this offensive moron. Eat my reds'. And without any sort of balancing at all my ratio of assigned red to green has stayed at around the 80% green 20% red mark.

In truth I think that this is a credit to the members of Anti Online that, on good day, 4 out of every 5 articles are worthwhile and only 1 in 5 are worthless.

So observation number one. Is the 70% positive threshold truly representative of the good post / bad post ratio on this site? Are there enough /really/ poor posts (as opposed to just not very useful posts) to go round? 70% negative seems fair, but maybe it should be slightly higher for positive.

Observation number two. I have been looking at other peoples assignment ratios since I got the 'Miyagi' message. Thre are a lot of people with a whole ruck load of negative anti-points they have to give out to get even. This is where I feel the biggest stumbling block is. I myself had to try dumping negatives onto already banned users to try and balance myself up and /I/ wasn't /that/ out of balance to begin with :(. Some of the seniors are going to have real problems.

I have even noticed that someone dumped me with a red one (a drive-by), on a post that was otherwise extremely positive this morning. As this was my /first/ red one (I'm _not_ whining about this btw) the timing seems a bit of a conincidence. Surely this dumping of red points will skew the sytem even more.

This change is designed to have an effect on the way users assign anti-points from here on in, but it takes into account those anti-points assigned prior to the implimentation of this system. Maybe the implimentation of this system requires that the amount of points assigned by users is returned to zero so everyone starts from a 50% positive 50% negative position again.

Observation number three. Strategic re-evaluation. Is the goal of auto-closing threads sound? Have you fully explored the possiblility of having more human moderators? Community is a two way thing (which I know you know ;)) - I'm sure people would fall over themselves to get involved. I would. Just a thought.

As I said before I'm not second guessing. I have faith that 'things will turn out form the best' - they usually do IME. I am fully aware that you will have already given /considerably/ more thought than I to these issues and I have total faith that AO will eventually be a better site for the changes.

My only real concern is that the short term effects of this could be negative, especially on newer users who might get a lot more reds in this dumping process, unless the appropriate actions are taken to negate these effects during the implimentation phase.

Well, I must say that at first I was against this system... but, as Terr says, we'll see what happens. One of the things that caught my eye in JP's explanatory post was that "the system will try to see how you're assigning points based on the behaviour of how everyone else is assigning points and adjust from there" (paraphrased). This basically means to me that, if overall, most people are assigning positive points, the system won't hold you to the 1-in-4 negs for long... it will slowly slip to 1-in-5, then 1-in-6 and so on. So folks... perhaps JP has once again surprised us with a great new feature. And again as Terr said, only time will tell (and, knowing JP, if it's not right, he'll fix and/or adjust it)

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Originally posted here by ntsa
Observation number two. I have been looking at other peoples assignment ratios since I got the 'Miyagi' message. Thre are a lot of people with a whole ruck load of negative anti-points they have to give out to get even. This is where I feel the biggest stumbling block is. I myself had to try dumping negatives onto already banned users to try and balance myself up and /I/ wasn't /that/ out of balance to begin with :(. Some of the seniors are going to have real problems.

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You obviously didn't read JP's message very well:

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Originally posted here by JP
Secondly, you don't become "balanced" by just giving out negative antipoints needlessly. You also become "balanced" by not giving out positive antipoints to stupid little 1 sentence posts just because the person's your friend and you want to kiss ass (which happens a LOT).

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And about seniors having problems? "the system will reduce the impact that your assignments have on people" aaww, how scary! You're in deep **** now, huh? I'd rather have mafia knocking on my door than getting my ap's too positive! The balancing doesn't even have to happen in this week or even in this month. You'll have infinite time to balance your account, you won't get banned if you give out too many antipoints. They, at least the positives if they were the ones going off the scale just then stop affecting anything which I think is a good new feature.

Ok I am reconsidering my opinion...
I am concerned about those who think they will have to give out negs just to get "Balanced" while balanced appears to not be 50/50 but around 70/30(?) My fear is that some will balance their accounts on a noobs mis worded post..

ie: Hacking Hotmail: by leo_wank3r
How would you hack a hotmail account?

instead of asking:

Hacking Hotmail: Ican_comunic8
I have heard that Hot mail accounts are easily hacked/cracked. I would like to know if this is true.. (Yes or no Answer)

Ok Given that we read the posts people put and not post AP's on the Subject line.. and we do READ what the person is asking and not what we think they are saying..
which of the above posts would recieve the Negs and/or which would we passover and/or which would we give green .. My personal approach passover the first , and answer the second and forget the AP's
I dont think I am coherant.. nees sleep sry guys I hope I am able to be clear on my point..

Cheers

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Originally posted here by ntsa
(...) In truth I think that this is a credit to the members of Anti Online that, on good day, 4 out of every 5 articles are worthwhile and only 1 in 5 are worthless.

So observation number one. Is the 70% positive threshold truly representative of the good post / bad post ratio on this site? Are there enough /really/ poor posts (as opposed to just not very useful posts) to go round? 70% negative seems fair, but maybe it should be slightly higher for positive. (...)

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I have to agree with ntsa here. I also don't think the math works out. imho, if you state that at least 50% of the antipoints being spend site-wide should be negative, you're saying that 50% of the contents of these forums is so bad that it deserves negative points.

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Originally posted here by Guus
I have to agree with ntsa here. I also don't think the math works out. imho, if you state that at least 50% of the antipoints being spend site-wide should be negative, you're saying that 50% of the contents of these forums is so bad that it deserves negative points.

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I think JP is basically saying that 1/5 deserve negative ap's and only 1/4 of the rest 4/5 (that's 1/5 of the posts also) deserve positive ap's. 3/4 of the posts wouldn't get antipoints at all.